1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates to the production of dynamically moving musical note sequences while playing electronic musical instruments.
2. Description of Prior Art
Traditional musical instruments use stationary notes that keep sounding the same note over and over when played. For instance, a piano has 88 notes that all operate in a stationary manner. Each a the key is pressed, the same note is produced, repeatedly. Electronic keyboard organs and synthesizers use a similar type of technology of producing the same note each time a key is pressed. It is often possible to change the entire musical key of the instrument, which shifts the note outputs. As an example, a middle C doesn't produce a C any more, but produces another note with surrounding notes shifted accordingly, relative in frequency to the C. Using this technique the musical key of smaller selectable sections of the keyboard can also be shifted. Traditionally, this technique requires setting the musical key using a keyboard control button. The setting of the new musical key doesn't generate a note, but simply adjusts a range of subsequently played notes. After the musical key is adjusted, the musician plays the keyboard in the conventional manner.
Often times there is internal or external software or hardware that remaps the notes to produce various note ranges along the keyboard span. For many years software has been available that remaps the notes on various instruments. Sequencer programs that record and edit multiple tracks of a song have available that perform extensive remapping of notes and that can produce elaborate chords.
For years instruments have also delivered the capability of generating arpeggios that are chord notes that automatically sequence through as various notes are held down. Using hardware and/or software, they cycle through the held down notes using various patterns and timing. This often creates mechanical sounding arpeggios. Another technique is to have various sequences of notes or chords stored in memory and play them automatically while the musician harmonizes with them, or plays other melodic notes at the same time. Here again, there can be a “canned” mechanical sound to the computer generated sequences. Often times there are entire songs recorded into memory that manufacturers have provided for the musician to play along and harmonize with.
The above mentioned techniques are often used with other electronic instruments, such as electronic guitars, drums, or clarinet type controllers, just to mention a few. These instruments often produce what is called a MIDI, which stands for Musical Instrument Digital Interface, output through a port, which generates a 31.25 thousand bits per second serial stream of digital data. This stream encodes the note number, note velocity, and note on or note off event to be sent to external synthesizers or computers, among a host of other MIDI functions. These other functions can contain pitch bend, sustain, and volume commands, just to name a few.
The most closely applicable portions of the prior art have offered a wide assortment of extremely commendable techniques used to alter the pitch of musical output notes in very creative ways. However, none of previous techniques use the powerful, specific, completely user controlled, input note triggering source of the present invention. In past inventions, arpeggio note values are generated using various algorithms and placed in pattern tables or shift registers to be automatically cycled through while various notes are pressed. The present invention uses no such pattern tables to cycle through. It uses the playing surface, itself, to generate patterns of moving notes and the musician directly produces the sequencing based upon the specific played input notes, rather than using any internally cycled pattern tables. This is a huge distinction. The input notes may be assigned to index into interval producing tables while being played. The tables are judiciously set up ahead of time by the musician, who subsequently generates the final output sequences, on a note-by-note basis. Moving note or arpeggio variations are created by the musician during a performance based upon the variable interval producing events assigned to the playing surface notes, rather than being stored in pattern tables. Since no pattern tables are used, the musician has ultimate control over the output timing and output note values, since each note or chord played is chosen and triggered, intelligently, on-the-fly.